Description
A lovely, robust and readily-grown miniature, early spring species. Small corms make abundant but tight bunches of yellow-centred, white flowers. Each has a tiny mark on the base of the anther filament which looks like a tiny black specks deep in the throat, a fact first recorded by E.A.Bowles in the early 20th Century. Flowering is very early in the year; from January onwards here.
It presents no difficulties, carefully sited outside, but only in view of its size, or grown in pans under alpine glass (though it is fully garden hardy). Outside provide a well-drained, sunny spot with some summer dryness.
This white-flowered plant, which is rare in cultivation, was once regarded as a white-flowered phase of a species which also had a blue-flowered form. The naming has changed and the blue plant went from just a colour form, to a subspecies, to a full species so that if you are looking for Crocus pestalozzae caeruleus, then you will now find it in literature and in our shop under its new name of Crocus violaceus.
